Local resources and typical animal products
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3Consorzio per la Sperimentazione, Divulgazione e Applicazione di Biotecniche Innovative (ConSDABI), National Focal Point Italiano della FAO (NFP.I - FAO) per la tutela del germoplasma animale in via di estinzione, Località Piano Cappelle, 82100 Benevento, Italy
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The globalisation process should take into account the increasingly diversified social requirements worldwide, which tend to safeguard the specific features of different communities and cultures linked to diverse traditions and history; these specificities have proved to be determining factors of sustainable development, going beyond environment-related and socio-economic aspects. Local biological resources will constitute an element of increasing importance, especially as regards the necessity to restore the widest range of genetic differentiation of livestock species in order to put into practice future strategies linked to the achievement of dynamic goals, in agreement with sustainable production systems. The optimisation of autochthonous resources utilisation must lead to the individuation of models of sustainable agriculture. In this way it is possible to give a new impetus to local economy and sustainable development, consistent with an optimal use of autochthonous resources. An efficient promotion of autochthonous genetic types (AGTs) must include initiatives able to consider ‘quality’ and ‘specificity’ as strategic elements of market differentiation.
Biodiversity is a conditio sine qua non for producing food with specific nutritional and extranutritional properties. The primary objective of biodiversity protection must be to provide diversified sources of ‘bioactive’ molecules able to satisfy the changing nutritional and extranutritional consumer needs in order to achieve a homeostatic level identifiable with human welfare and well-being. Promoting autochthonous genetic resources through typified traditional products requires a systemic approach, due to the complexity of interactions among factors influencing the product itself, where the epigenetics component plays an important role.
Indeed, “traditional product” does not have a static meaning but a dynamic one, in the sense of a continuous innovation of the production process in order to improve total quality. Innovative biotechniques should not be used ‘to produce tipicity’, but to single out the potential of raw matter to be transformed into traditional and specific products. In conclusion, some main stakes of knowledge production are underlined, and a recommendation is made to renew relationships between scientists and non-research actors by paying more attention to social and technical structures.